What’s That Flushing Sound?

Health-care budgets may be strained, but a publicly owned long-term care facility that opened less than two years ago has money to flush on upgrading some 320 toilets.

The Summit at Quadra Village in Victoria was designed and built by the Capital Regional Hospital District on behalf of Island Health, which has a 25-year lease on the building.

The $86-million building got its occupancy permit early in 2020 and began welcoming residents in July of that year after being kept empty for several months in case it was needed as a field hospital during the early part of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Now, less than two years after opening, it has hired a contractor to reinstall all of the toilets in resident rooms, 320 in total, a process made more complicated by the fact people are now living in the rooms.

“It’s concerning just simply because of the added costs that will create,” said Peter Milobar, the BC Liberal finance critic and MLA for Kamloops-North Thompson. “Needing to redo 320 toilets two years later from a brand new build, what else could have been done in the meantime instead [with that money] within that health authority?”

“One would hope that construction quality would be better than that,” said BC Green Party Leader and Cowichan Valley MLA Sonia Furstenau. “I would hope there would be some explanation and accountability for that.”

The Capital Regional District’s website calls the Summit a “state-of-the-art complex care facility” for people with complex needs and dementia. It has outdoor spaces on each floor, an on-site hair salon and a dialysis room so residents with kidney failure can avoid frequent trips to the hospital.

The building has private bedrooms with ensuite bathrooms.

Spokespeople for Island Health and the CRHD did not confirm there was a problem with the installation of the toilets, but said the work being done now is to increase waterproofing and make the toilets more durable.

Island Health said the work won’t cost the health authority anything since it’s the CRHD that owns the building. Established by the provincial government and owned by the regional district, the Capital Regional Hospital District is a corporation that contributes to developing and improving health-care infrastructure in the region.

“Residents are not at risk,” the Island Health spokesperson said. “Each resident is temporarily relocated to another room while the repairs take place. We anticipate all toilets will be completed next year.”

Capital Regional District spokesperson Andy Orr said in an email that there was money left in the project budget to pay for the toilet work, so there will be no additional cost to taxpayers above what was already allocated for the building.

There was nothing wrong with the toilets or how they were installed, he said. “Not a deficiency just a decision to upgrade.... The toilets do not need replacing and no contractor was at fault.”

Orr did not respond to questions about why an “upgrade” would be necessary so soon after the building was constructed. Nor did he answer a followup question about how much the work would cost the CRHD.

BC Liberal critic Milobar said the situation is concerning whether it’s due to a flaw with how the toilets were installed or if the CRHD is simply spending money leftover in the budget. Many other public projects could have used the funding, he said.

“We have scarce and limited capital dollars available and they need to be spent appropriately and wisely and for the best value so we can get the most amount of work done across the province for the same amount being spent,” he said.

Furstenau said administrators need to be transparent about what happened and what they may have learned from any mistakes. “Any public funds being spent, it should make sense to the public and it should be justifiable and defensible,” she said.

There are many stories in health care about the need for more funding, whether it’s family doctors who are struggling to pay their overhead or patients who can’t get diagnostic testing, she said. “It’s hard to square that with ‘we’re going to [redo] brand new toilets.’”

The Summit has also been the subject of many complaints about a high-pitched hum coming in warmer months from the chiller on its rooftop, leading Victoria’s city council in February to commit to removing the exemption for community care facilities from the city’s noise bylaws.